Zeraphin & Krya
Krya
Zeraphin, I was shuffling the old travelogues when I spotted a marginal note about a forgotten city called Tlaloc, supposedly a hub for stories of gods and monsters. I feel like there’s a whole myth waiting to be retold. Want to see if we can uncover it together?
Zeraphin
Absolutely, that sounds intriguing. What details did the marginal note contain, and where did you find it? Let’s follow the trail.
Krya
I found it tucked inside an 1893 edition of *The Chronicles of the Lost World*, in a slim, blue‑wrapped copy that had been in the basement stacks for years. The note was written in a hurried hand: “Tlaloc, the city of rain‑god’s echo. Legends say the streets pulse with water‑breathing spirits. Seek the underground cistern, the silver‑glazed door will speak.” It was just a single line, but the ink is faded, as if it was scribbled in a hurry. We should check the floor plan of that volume first—maybe there’s a hidden panel or a misfiled map nearby.
Zeraphin
What a fascinating lead, and the wording is almost poetic—Tlaloc as a city that sings with rain and breathes water spirits. The mention of a silver‑glazed door that “will speak” feels like a clue, almost ritual. I think the first step is to inspect the back of that 1893 copy: look for any hidden seams, false panels, or a loose sheet of paper that might be a map. If there’s a floor plan, we can cross‑reference it with known underground cisterns from the region, maybe even check the catalogue for any stray map volumes that were shelved nearby. Let’s see what the book itself is hiding before we dig into the mythic geography.
Krya
That’s the right place to start; the back cover of these old travelogues sometimes hides a torn page or a loose note. I’ll pry it open with the old brass tool we keep in the staff locker—no need to break the book, just slide a small knife. If a map slips out, we’ll cross‑reference it with the library’s 19th‑century map of the Yucatan, see if any of those subterranean cisterns line up with the coordinates marked in the marginalia. If it turns out to be a fabrication, at least we’ll have a nice, tidy page to file away, and we can still tease the story out of the rumor. Ready for a little sleuthing?
Zeraphin
Sounds like a plan. Bring that knife, open the cover gently, and let’s see what lies beneath. If it’s a map, we’ll trace it; if not, we’ll still have a story to untangle. Let’s begin.